I have blogged many times about my desire to launch a new webcomic (supposed to be last year but will be this year) and in preparation I’m trying to sketch relevant pictures and designs everyday. Now I don’t think they’re ‘good’ enough to post here on the site, so I will be uploading them for display on my twitter account. If you’re not following me on twitter and would like to see my rough sketches, feel free to follow along with me.
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Over the Christmas break I received the following plushes from my Grandma:
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I think they’re awesome. Want one of your own? The pattern for Gerry the Amigurumi Goat can be bought from AP Designs on Esty, whilst the Goat Toy Knitting pattern can be bought from Jellybum, also on Etsy. All you need then is a Grandma (or Grandma’s friend) to knit one for you.
Hopefully they’ll inspire me to start that new webcomic I keep talking about!
It’s been a quiet year here at twisted musings. I haven’t cartooned as much as my previous years (and the ‘best of 2011′ will struggle to get to 10 cartoons) as my focus has been elsewhere (most notably my new strip relaunch). In the spirit of Christmas I created the image below, which can be used as desktop wallpapers for your computer or mobile device. May you have a happy and restful Christmas and I hope to see you again in the New Year.
Wallpaper – 1920 x 1200
Wallpaper – 1024 x 768
Wallpaper – 320 x 480 (mobile devices)
It doesn’t seem that long ago I was blogging about Halloween cartoons and now Christmas is right around the corner. With that said, here are some of my favourite Christmas cartoons created here at twisted musings.
Godfather Christmas
Eggnog Santa
Santa and the Ninja
Fake Rudolf
Joker Santa
Cookie Christmas
Jailed Santa
Santa in the ‘hood.
With Halloween just around the corner, I thought it was a good time to go diving through my archives and discover all the Halloween-themed cartoons I could find. It doesn’t have the same level of importance in Australia as it does in the States but is still celebrated nonetheless. And when you live in apartments, you tend to miss the knocks on the door from ‘trick-or-treaters’ that you may get living in a house.
Halloween also means that Christmas isn’t that far round the corner either.
The following is a selection of Halloween-themed cartoons found here on the site:
Witch Doctor
Mummy Skeleton
Death and the Vulture
Mummy Patient
Graveyard Shift
Zombie Scarecrow
The psychologist and Death
Bone Revenge
A couple of months ago, I interviewed Carl Sherriff for a project I was working on. Carl is one of Sydney’s best visual communicators and has been working in the visual communications industry for over 20 years, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn a thing or two. He has worked with a number of major clients including McDonalds and Price Waterhouse Coopers. The highlights of the interview are listed below.
Why did you want to become a designer?
I was a sick child and for many years couldn’t do very much, except read and draw. The thought of becoming a designer came a few years later.
What was your first job / design job?
I completed my Press Cadetship with ACP and the Hobart Mercury, where I created a cartoon character for Tasmania’s kids called ‘The Hairy Blob’.
Do you still have any samples?
No (laughs). I worked as a designer in publishing before moving to London.
Believe it or not, the picture below represents the first drawing I’ve done in NINE months. It’s strange, I wanted a break from drawing before starting again, but I’ve found the longer I’ve left it, the harder it’s been to get back to picking up the pencil. Strange as it may seem, I was scared – scared that I couldn’t produce some of the ideas in my mind and the longer I left it, the more scared I got of starting again. Then yesterday I decided enough was enough. I’d start with a really rough thumbnail and go from there. ‘If it doesn’t look right, it’s only a thumbnail’, I told myself, ‘Doesn’t mean anything’. Then, I was still drawing after 10 minutes, then 20; the longer I went the more detailed the picture became. And what you see below is what was left after an hour. Personally, I think it’s beautiful and wish I had drawn it bigger. Let me know what you think.
Check here for the new home of the finished picture.
I’ve started re-doing some of my Billy strips, in preparation of my new webcomic launch (sometime soon) and have begun to assemble them all in one place. Keep checking back here as I add the strips one at a time.
After a flat day at work, I came home to find this picture James Anderson had drawn for me of the star of my next webcomic, Billy. I had approached James for a commission (he draws the most amazing webcomic ‘Ellie on Planet X‘ and James pitched to me that we swap sketches of each other’s characters! I’m blown away by what he did. Check out his strip; his work is visually stunning. Check out the pic I did for him here.
What do they say about ‘the best laid plans of mice and men’?
I was all set to debut a new webcomic this week – one I have been talking about for weeks (and probably months). Everything was in alignment; I had made templates, I had been doing warm up sketches for months and I had written 60 strips in advance so it was simply a matter of sitting down and drawing.
The night came, the drawings were made… and that’s when things started to fall apart:
- The scanner stopped working
- The file formatting I’m using made the image look well below its best
- The new website doesn’t work the way it should
Everything that could possibly go wrong did. It was a disaster. I became very disheartened.
Nevertheless, I’m pressing on. Once everything falls into place I’ll put up a post here so you can check it out. I’m very much invested in it – there’s a fire in me to produce once again so you should see the results very soon. In the meantime, I’ll be posting any sketches I’ve produced on twitter (a lot of them on post it notes). So if you aren’t already following me there and you want to see some of my rough work, feel free to follow me. In the meantime, a preview:
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